A convicted rapist on the run for three decades was caught in a traffic stop over his bicycle missing a rear reflector.
George Hartleroad, 71, was pulled over by a cop in West Des Moines, Iowa, and asked for his identity.
Police body camera footage shared by KCCI shows Hartleroad answering with ‘Gregory Stallins’, which is a fake name, and giving a false social security number.
The cop on June 26 runs the information multiple times but it does not appear correct.
Hartleroad tells the cop that he is homeless and has not had a driver’s license in years, and that it was last issued in Florida. He claims he has been in Iowa since 1991.
The cop lets him go but then locates him 30 minutes later and tells him to take his hat and sunglasses for a face recognition photo.
‘If I can’t verify who you are and the info you did give me comes back to nobody, and that comes back to other people, that becomes a bigger issue,’ the officer is heard saying.
‘You don’t think you have warrants out for you, do you?’
Hartleroad replies: ‘Not as far as I know, I don’t.’
Asked if he had committed any crimes, Hartleroad gestured he had not, besides missing a rear reflector.
But the cop presses him.
‘Alright brother, time to be honest with me, OK? So the info you give me comes back to a dead guy. Gregory Stallins is dead.’
Another cop arrived at the scene and Hartelroad eventually admits he is not Gregory Stallins and, ‘I’m not dead’.
Once they get his real name, they discover he had warrants out for him in Wisconsin after being convicted of rape and had escaped a halfway house in 1995.
‘What’s crazy is 1990, that means you’ve been on the run longer than two of the three officers out here on the street have been alive,’ a cop says.
Hartleroad then goes on a short rant, upset about his baggage.
‘I will jump again as soon as they turn me loose,’ he says.
‘They’ve been up in my a** for… 41 years now on a nine-year sentence.’
Hartleroad was arrested following the weird confrontation and is in custody under the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.
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